Five Very Scary Wikipedia Articles (U.S. Focussed)

I find myself stumbling around Wikipedia far too often, and here are some of the strange/scary articles I found on there. Of course, it’s Wikipedia, and as such it’s not the best source for ‘true’ information – but a fair amount of this is public knowledge/can be found elsewhere (other than conspiracy theorists bedrooms).

‘COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations. COINTELPRO tactics included discrediting targets through psychological warfare, planting false reports in the media, smearing through forged letters, harassment, wrongful imprisonment, illegal violence and assassination. Covert operations under COINTELPRO took place between 1956 and 1971; however, the FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception.The FBI’s stated motivation at the time was “protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order.”‘

‘Rex 84, short for Readiness Exercise 1984, was a secretive “scenario and drill” developed by the United States federal government to suspend the United States Constitution, declare martial law, place military commanders in charge of state and local governments, and detain large numbers of American citizens who are deemed to be “national security threats”, in the event that the President declares a “State of Domestic National Emergency”. The plan states that events that might cause such a declaration would be widespread U.S. opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad, such as if the United States were to directly invade Central America.To combat what the government perceived as “subversive activities”, the plan also authorized the military to direct ordered movements of civilian populations at state and regional levels.’

‘The FBI Indexes were a series of personnel databases used by the FBI before the adoption by the Bureau of computerized databases. They were based on paper index cards. They were used to track US citizens and others believed by the Bureau to be dangerous to national security. The indexes generally had different ‘classes’ of danger the ‘subject’ was thought to represent.’

(As of 2008 there are reportedly eight million Americans listed in the database as possible threats, often for trivial reasons, whom the government may choose to track, question, or detain in a time of crisis. The existence of the database was first reported on in May 2008 by Christopher Ketcham and in July 2008 by Tim Shorrock.)

‘Unit 731 (731部隊 Nana-san-ichi butai?, Chinese: 731部队) was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Japanese personnel. […] After Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allies in 1945, Douglas MacArthur became the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, rebuilding Japan during the Allied occupation. MacArthur secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731 in exchange for providing America, but not the other wartime allies, with their research on biological warfare. American occupation authorities monitored the activities of former unit members, including reading and censoring their mail.[26] The U.S. believed that the research data was valuable. The U.S. did not want other nations, particularly the Soviet Union, to acquire data on biological weapons.’